BYTEing Question Responses: What is the most afraid you have ever been while playing a video game?

Morgan Wysong

Scariest moment I had with playing a game was when I was watching a friend play Until Dawn and during the finale they made a decision that brought a Wendigo right over to the characters’ face and it looked right at them and screamed. I have never jumped so hard and I almost made my friend die.

Courtney Tuchman

I used to play video games with my older brother a lot. One of the games we played together was Eternal Darkness, a psychological horror game that came out for the GameCube. There were plenty of things in that game that scared me, but it was the swinging axes from the ceiling that really did it. I mean, I was only five! Watching my brother clumsily try to avoid getting the character’s head chopped off was slightly terrifying. I got so scared that I couldn’t even sleep at night. Not only did my brother get in trouble for showing me such a violent game, but my mom also told me I wasn’t allowed to play video games anymore. Obviously, that lasted. To this day though, I still remember trembling on the floor of my brother’s room, secretly hoping he would switch the game to something like Super Monkey Ball.

Lucas Schmidt (@schmidtyfro)

The summer after Dead Space was released I was spending a few weeks at a friend’s house out-of-state. I picked up the game the day after we watched Aliens for my first time. My mind couldn’t stop thinking about intergalactic monsters and why in the hell anyone would get on a spaceship with anything less than a small army. That first night of playing Dead Space my friend fell asleep pretty early. So I sat there in his room, staring at a little 16″ TV for what must have been at least five hours. All the while I was trying not to lose my cool and wake up my friend by kicking something in his room out of sheer terror. Two things terrified me the most that night: Whenever the monsters of Dead Space made noises, and whenever my friend snored in his sleep.

When you’re 16 years old and playing a game as frightening as Dead Space, it’s hard to tell which sounds are coming from the game, which are coming from someone who is sleeping, and which ones you’re just hearing in your head.

Kelsey Hayes

Before I continue, promise you won’t laugh, because I know it’s really lame. To pretext this, I’m terrified of most insects. I was playing the fire ant mission on Fallout: New Vegas, and before I saw any of the ants, I heard the noise that their legs made. It sounded a little too real for me, and I jumped every time I heard one of the ants coming. The fact that they spit fire at me didn’t scare me; it was their walking noises. I’ve since gotten used to it, and am no longer scared of the fire ant walking noises. And that kids, is the time that I was most scared while playing a video game.

Carmen Elizebeth Schwierking

The scariest moment I had playing a video game does not involve a horror game. My scariest moment happened when I was trying to get all of the achievements in Bioshock. Four achievements needed to pop when I beat the game. Seeing the other three come up and not “Brass Balls” was terrifying because I was worried I would have to do another hard, no Vita-Chamber run of the whole game. Luckily it popped a minute later. That minute of waiting was terrifying.

Jake Doolin (@clingtoascheme)

I tend to not scare very easily. Part of that comes from the distance I keep from media meant to spook me. If I know something is made specifically to put fear into me, I go the other direction. So for anything to really get under my skin it’s got to come from a place that my scare radar can’t pick up on. Kentucky Route Zero is such a game to me, because I didn’t go into it expecting to be afraid. But during the games masterful first episode there is a trip down a mineshaft that makes for one of the tensest sections I’ve played in a game. And in the final moments of that section, the fear that the atmosphere creates is replaced with all in compassing sadness that still gets me to this day.